Week 2 | GV330 | Lecture 2
London School of Economics
Modes of Statistical Inference
“Big Data” and Causal Inference
Credibility Crisis in the Social Sciences
Adam Bonica (2014): Mapping the Ideological Marketplace
Creates a method of measuring the ideological positions of political actors based on their campaign contributions
Uses data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which includes over 100 million individual contributions to political campaigns from 1979–2012
Creates a method of measuring the ideological positions of political actors based on their campaign contributions
Uses data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which includes over 100 million individual contributions to political campaigns from 1979–
Introduces the CFScore
Ideological Summary of State Politics (2010)
Campaigns use data to construct predictive models for more efficient targeting
These models produce three types of “predictive scores” for each citizen in the voter database
Note: predictive scores for responsiveness based on heterogeneous treatment effects can be seen as causal inference. We see this often in the microtargeting literature.
‘Big Data’
Notes: The x-axis is likelihood of supporting a Democratic candidate over a Republican candidate, ranging from 0 (left) to 100 (right). The y-axis is likelihood of voting ranging, from 100 (low) to 0 (high).
When we ‘move’ X, what happens to Y?
Example:
We can never observe the counterfactual outcome for the same unit at the same time
Gerber & Green (2000): The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout
Theory
Theory
Voter turnout theories based on rational self-interested behavior generally fail to predict significant turnout unless they account for the utility that citizens receive from performing their civic duty
Two aspects of this type of utility, intrinsic satisfaction from behaving in accordance with a norm and extrinsic incentives to comply
Theory
Voter turnout theories based on rational self-interested behavior generally fail to predict significant turnout unless they account for the utility that citizens receive from performing their civic duty
Two aspects of this type of utility, intrinsic satisfaction from behaving in accordance with a norm and extrinsic incentives to comply
Gerber, Green, and Larimer (2008) test intrinsic motives in a large scale field experiment by applying varying degrees of extrinsic pressure on voters using to series of mailings to 180,002 households before the August 2006 primary election in Michigan.
Hypotheses
Civic Duty:
Hawthorne Effect:
Self:
Neighbors:
Experimental Treatment
Gerber & Green (2000): The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout
Treatment Groups
Gerber & Green (2000): The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout
Covariate Balance
Gerber & Green (2000): The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout
Example:
Note: These methods are still in the early stages of development and require further research and validation.
We often hear about …
Why do we have this credibility crisis?
Fanelli (2010 & 2011)
How can we address the credibility crisis?